How To Make Vegetable Stock in Your Slow Cooker

This tutorial will teach you how to make vegetable stock in your slow cooker using veggie scraps you already have on hand. It’s a two-part process that will help eliminate food waste and save money at the grocery store!

Welcome back to week #2 of SOUPER SUNDAY! I was so thrilled to hear how excited you guys were about the return of my favorite series. And with all this cold and rainy weather here in SF, I know I’m grateful for the abundance of soup recipes around here!

But before we delve too deep into the series, I thought we should get back to basics. A few years ago I posted this tutorial showing you how to make bone broth in your slow cooker. Since then, so many of you have made the recipe and discovered the ease that is making stock in your slow cooker. FYI “broth” is essentially stock that has simmered for longer but both are pretty much interchangeable.

A lot of my Souper Sunday recipes are vegetarian or vegan, because you know I love me some plants. This means that these recipes usually call for vegetable stock so I wanted to show you guys how to make your own vegetable stock, because it’s basically the easiest thing ever.

There are definitely some decent vegetable stocks on the market, but the good ones (that don’t have added preservatives and colorings), can get quite pricey. It ends up being a huge waste of money, because you can actually make vegetable stock without having to pay a single penny. How you might ask? By saving your veggie scraps!

I go through a lot of veggies daily and most of them have stalks or scraps that can actually be saved and used to make stock. It’s all about keeping a ziploc bag in your freezer and adding the scraps as you go. Once it’s full, you just add them to the slow-cooker, top with water and simmer away!

I almost feel bad posting this as a recipe because it’s sooooo easy, but like I said, sometimes it’s better to get back to basics! And now when a recipe calls for veggie stock, you’ll already know how to make it.

How To Make Vegetable Stock in Your Slow Cooker

Ingredients

Instructions

Place veggies in a slow cooker and top with water until covered with a 1/2 inch of water.

Stir in sea salt.

Cook on low for 12-24 hours.

Strain veggies into a bowl and reserve liquid in mason jars or airtight containers.

Discard veggies (they will be too mushy to eat anyway!)

Freeze for later use or use within one week.

Notes

*I keep my veggie scraps in a ziploc bag in the freezer and just dump these into the slow cooker. Ensure that you have at least a bit of onion in there for flavor and feel free to include the peels. Avoid using any scraps with seeds (i.e. bell peppers) but otherwise any veggie scrap is totally fine. The more greens you include (I love adding kale stalks!) and the longer you cook it for, the darker the stock.

Have you ever made your own veggie stock? Do you save your veggie scraps?

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JOSIE

February 12, 2017 at 2:38 pm

Hi Davida . This looks great & I’d like to start saving up somz veggie scraps to ret it. Just one question – if I use frozen veggie scaps, will I be able to freeze the stock anyway? Thanks for all the recipes.

Kaitlyn Tornow

February 12, 2017 at 7:16 pm

I’ve been saving veggie scraps for a while in the freezer, with no plan of what to do with them, and this morning I decided to finally figure it out. Reading my blogs is part of my daily getting into alignment routine (from Jess Lively 🙂 ), so I didn’t have to look at all really. Thank you!

This is my tried and true method for making veggie stock too, although I use pepper scraps as well. I also toss in some Bay leaves and a great rind of Parmesan if I’ve got one. Heaven.Meghan@CleanEatsFastFeets recently posted…Week in Review: The Short and Sweet Edition (#70)